Mahalanobis, Prasanta Chandra

Mahalanobis, Prasanta Chandra

Born June 29, 1893, in Calcutta; died there June 27, 1972. Indian statistician and economist.

Mahalanobis was educated at the University of Calcutta (1912) and at Cambridge (1915). From 1931 he headed the India Statistical Institute (Calcutta), which he had established. He was founder (1933) and editor of the statistical journal Sankhya. He served as a member of the Planning Commission of India (1955-67) and as a government advisor on problems of statistics (1949-67).

Mahalanobis’ theoretical works and practical recommendations proceed from positions of petit bourgeois radicalism. He called for the industrialization of India on a basis of accelerated development of the state sector and the centralization of material and monetary resources in the hands of the state, and he favored the simultaneous further development of small enterprise. Mahalanobis played an important part in the formation and development of economic and scientific ties between India and the USSR. He was a foreign member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1958) and a member of the Royal Society of London (1945).

WORKS

Some Observations on the Process of the Growth of National Income. [Calcutta, 1953.]Talks on Planning. Bombay-Calcutta [1961].The Approach of Operational Research to Planning in India. Bombay-Calcutta [1963].In Russian translation:Vyborochnye obsledovaniia v Indii (Novyi opyt Indiiskogo statisticheskogo instituta). Moscow, 1958. (Translated from English.)

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